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shieldedfrom radiation, has its own air-pumping system, its own temperature and humidity controls, its own food supply.” He opened a closet. “Look.”
    The closet was a small arsenal.
    “Verrick could handle every kind of gun known. Once a week we all went out in the jungle and shot up everything in sight. Nobody can get into this room except through the regular door. Or—” He ran his hands over one of the walls. “Verrick never missed a trick. He designed this and supervised every inch of it. When it was finished, all the workmen went off to the camps, like Pharaoh and his tombs. During the final hours the Corps was excluded.”
    “Why?”
    “Verrick had equipment installed he didn’t plan to use while Quizmaster. However, we teeped some of the workmen as they were being loaded aboard transports. Teeps are always curious when someone tries to exclude them.” He slid a section of wall aside. “This is Verrick’s special passage. Ostensibly, it leads out. Realistically, it leads in.”
    Cartwright tried to ignore the chill perspiration coming out on his palms and armpits. The passage opened up behind the big steel desk; it wasn’t hard to picture the rexeroid wall sliding back and the assassin emerging directly behind the new Quizmaster. “What do you suggest? Should I have it sealed?”
    “The strategy we’ve worked out doesn’t involve this apparatus. We’ll sow gas capsules under the flooring, the length of the passage, and forget about it. The assassin will be dead before he reaches this inner lock.” Shaeffer shrugged. “But this is minor.”
    “I’ll take your advice,” Cartwright managed to say. “Is there anything else I ought to know at this point?”
    “You ought to hear Moore. $$He’s a top-flight biochemist, a genius in his own way. He controls the Farben research labs; this is the first time he’s been around here in years. We’vebeen trying to scan something on his work, but frankly, the information is too technical for us.”
    One of the other teeps, a small dapper man with mustache and thinning hair, a shot glass in one hand, spoke up. “It would be interesting to know how much of that stuff Moore deliberately formulates in technical jargon to throw us off.”
    “This is Peter Wakeman,” Shaeffer said.
    Cartwright and Wakeman shook hands. The teep’s fingers were dainty and fragile; diffident fingers with none of the strength Cartwright was used to finding in his unclassifieds. It was hard to believe this was a man who headed the Corps, who had swung it away from Verrick at the critical moment. “Thanks,” Cartwright said.
    “You’re welcome. But it had nothing to do with you.” The teep showed equal interest in the tall old man. “How does one get to be a Prestonite? I haven’t read any of the books; are there three?”
    “Four.”
    “Preston was the odd-ball astronomer who got the observatories to watch for his planet—right? They trained their telescopes and found nothing. Preston went out after it and finally died in his ship. Yes, I once thumbed through
Flame Disc.
The man who owned it was a real crackpot; I tried to teep him. All I got was a chaotic jumble of passion.”
    “How do I teep?” Cartwright asked tightly.
    There was a time of absolute silence. The three teeps were all at work on him; he forced his attention on the elaborate tv set in the corner and tried to ignore them.
    “About the same,” Wakeman said presently. “You’re oddly phased for this society. The M-game places a great emphasis on the Aristotelian Golden Mean. You’ve got everything tied up in your ship. Outhouse or palace, if your ship goes down that’s the end of you.”
    “It won’t go down,” Cartwright told him harshly.
    The three teeps were amused. “In a universe of chance,nobody can predict,” said Shaeffer dryly. “It probably will be destroyed. Yet, it might get through.”
    “After you’ve talked to Moore,” Wakeman said, “it’ll be interesting to see if you